Robyn Doolittle's absorbing tale of mayor Rob Ford's life and scandals is filled with interesting details, especially about his family. Here are five.

Then-councillor and mayoral hopeful Rob Ford at his family's Deco Labels printing factory in Etobicoke. The tale of how the Fords built the business has been somewhat embellished by the family, Robyn Doolittle's new book suggests.

Star editor Michael Cooke speaks with reporter Robyn Doolittle about her new book: "Crazy Town - The Rob Ford Story."

In Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, Star reporter Robyn Doolittle explores the life and scandals of Rob Ford. The book is filled with absorbing details about Doolittle’s reporting and the mayor’s heavily publicized drug issues, but some of the most interesting revelations involve the family. “He is who he is because of them,” she writes in the first chapter. “His political philosophy, his strategy in crisis, his feelings about money, his compulsion to keep dirty laundry hidden — all can be explored through the lens of a fascinating family dynamic.” The Star has combed through the book to present five of these insights.

Don’t steal from a Ford

Doug Ford Sr. was born during the depression, and growing up poor left a permanent scar. Even when he was an MPP and multi-millionaire, he kept a “thick roll of bills” in a tin can behind a brick in the basement wall — “enough cash to buy a luxury car,” Doolittle writes. In April 1998, when the home was undergoing renovations, the money vanished. Ford Sr. wanted to find out who may have taken the money among his children (then in their late 20s and 30s), so he demanded the brood take a lie-detector test.

For two days, retired Toronto police sergeant Nelson Scharger (who had his own polygraph company) conducted interviews in a meeting room at Deco Labels. Each of the children, and Kathy Ford’s then husband, Ennio Stirpe agreed to be strapped into the machine. They were asked if they stole the cash. The three Ford brothers said no and passed.

Kathy and Stirpe did not pass, according to the book. “Predictably, the unremittingly strict Doug Ford St. lost it,” Doolittle writes.

Embellished history

Doolittle writes that the story of Doug Ford Sr. is an inspiring tale of a boy who grew up poor and built an “industry-leading company” through hard work and good instincts. “But in what would become a recurring theme in their political careers, the Fords could not resist embellishing,” she writes.

The genesis of Deco Labels — that Doug Sr. and Diane started the business out of the family basement — is “part of the family folklore,” first appearing in 1995 after the patriarch won the Progressive Conservative nomination, and going unchallenged ever since, she writes. The business was actually co-founded by one-time neighbour Ted Herriott in the early ’60s.

Herriott was setting up a Toronto base for the Avery label company, and recommended his upstart neighbour Doug Ford, then a successful salesman at a meat packing plant, when a sales job came up. The two later decided to break away and create Deco. The families were close — the children played together, the adults took ballroom dance lessons.

In 1965, Doug Sr. wanted to expand into tags, and Ted wanted to “stay the course,” Doolittle writes. Herriott told Doolittle there was a bit of a “personality clash.” He left Deco to start his own advertising company, and Deco Labels and Tags flourished and expanded under Ford’s leadership.

Business records and official directories confirm Herriott’s version. Was he bothered to be “airbrushed out of history?” “I’ll say I never understood it,” Herriott told Doolittle.

The Etobicoke Kennedys

When John Tory was running for Toronto mayor in 2003, he was told he needed to meet with the Fords, the “gatekeepers to Etobicoke.” Doug Sr. was a key guy in Conservative circles, but when Tory showed up at an airport-area restaurant, the entire family, except for Kathy, was waiting for him. Diane held court, asking nearly all of the questions and delivering the verdict: “We like you. You’ll get elected, because we’re going to help you in Etobicoke … you’ll serve for a period of time and then it will be Robbie’s turn,” Tory remembers the matriarch saying.

One source close to the family told Doolittle, “The Fords think of themselves as the Kennedys. They talk about it. They’re the Canadian Kennedys.”

Nearly ten years before that meeting, Doug Jr. volunteered for Doug Holyday’s mayoral campaign in Etobicoke. Doug Jr. loved politics, but was taking care of the family business and his family, a friend of Doug’s told Doolittle. “This dynamic would haunt the brothers’ relationship for years to come. Doug Jr. had been left with the responsibility of running Deco, leaving baby brother Rob the freedom to pursue his dreams,” Doolittle writes.

She also notes that those close to Doug say that “not so deep down,” he resented his brother. “Friends and former staff go so far as to say that none of the three brothers get along very well. Sometimes they go months without speaking . . . Their loyalty is to the family name, not necessarily to each other.”

Death of Doug Sr.

Doug Sr. was a tough guy, who “loved all this children fiercely and would have done anything for them. But he was never able to understand how his family ended up poisoned by drug use,” Doolittle writes.

Rob Ford was reelected as councillor for Ward 2 (Etobicoke North) in 2006, two months after his father died. “According to those close to him, this was the moment when things changed—for the whole family. The authoritarian figure was gone. The boys had lost their hero.” Doolittle writes that Ford would come home at night and “drink himself into another world” and sometimes use hard drugs or prescription pills. He also hung out at his sister Kathy’s house. Friends of the family tried to talk to him about it. “This seems to be the period when Ford transitioned to using crack cocaine, although his drug of choice continued to be alcohol,” Doolittle writes.

Scott MacIntyre

In 2005, Chris MacIntyre lived in an apartment above Diane and Doug Ford Sr.’s garage with his dad Scott MacIntyre and his dad’s girlfriend, Kathy Ford. Kathy was nice to Chris and they were happy, Doolittle writes. One day, he was playing video games after school while his dad, Kathy and some friends were in the main house. When he heard shouting, he went to investigate and heard a “deafening crack.”

“Kathy slumped to the floor. People started to run. Scott put down a 12-gauge shotgun, pushed someone out of the way, and ran to Kathy’s side,” Doolittle writes. Scott yelled to his son to call for an ambulance, but when Chris came back, his father had left. Later at the police station, he tried to protect his dad, first telling detectives that Scott was at work, but eventually telling them what he knew.

Outside of the police station, he saw Rob. “Rob, please let me stay with you. I have nowhere to go.” Rob told him, “I can’t do anything,” and turned away, Doolittle notes. Police said the shooting was accidental, that Scott was trying to break up a fight between two other people in the kitchen. Kathy survived the bullet graze with a scar, MacIntyre was charged with careless use of a firearm, along with two other charges, all of which he pleaded guilty to.

More recently, in January 2012, Scott MacIntyre arrived at Rob Ford’s home shouting that Ford and his sister owed him money, Doolittle notes. “You and your family are going to get it, you are going to pay for it,” she writes. While in prison on charges related to the incident, he was “viciously attacked and severely beaten,” court transcripts show.

Last week, MacIntyre launched a lawsuit against the mayor and two other men, alleging that Ford planned a jailhouse beating in an attempt to silence him, according to unproven allegations contained in the suit. Ford’s lawyer has denied the “very irresponsible” and “spurious” allegations.

When he was released from jail in the fall of 2012, MacIntyre posted on Facebook: “I learned a VERY valuable lesson back in January! No matter if you are 100% innocent and have broken NO LAWS you can still be put in JAIL for daring to challenge people who are CONNECTED with the POLITICAL MACHINE!!!!!!” (This post is no longer visible, Doolittle notes.)

When she contacted MacIntyre through Facebook to find out more about his January visit to the Ford home, he wrote back in July, in a tone different from his recent lawsuit (which was filed after Doolittle’s book went to press):

“The Fords as a whole family treated me like one of their own and for the things that I did to them they were more than fair and it would be remiss for me to say any different … I paid my debt to society and have put all this behind me and wish you and all other media would do the same. Why don’t you do a story on what a great job Rob has done as Mayor of this City. And the money he has saved the taxpayer!!!”

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